Brain cancer kills more under-40s than other cancers: experts
01 Oct 2014
More under-40s have been dying of brain cancer than due to other cancers because of a lack of research, according to experts, the online edition of the Mirror reported.
The chances of survival for the 16,000 people diagnosed every year continued to be poor due to only 1 per cent of funding going to finding a cure.
According to Brain Tumour Research (BTR) £3.5 million a year was spent on the disease against £32 million on breast cancer.
According to BTR chief Sue Farrington Smith there was a need for people to know that more and better funding into brain tumours could bring about better outcomes.
She said it was the biggest cancer killer of children and of people under the age 40, so not only parents lost their children from the cancer, children were also losing their parents.
Brain tumours had been the poor cousin of research.
Just 1 per cent of the national spend on cancer went to brain tumours even though they killed more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer, according to the BTR's latest National Research Funding report.
The report said, ''The improvements in survival for breast, leukaemia, bowel and prostate cancers is clearly linked to the relatively higher spend on research for these cancers, with breast receiving an average £32 million per annum over the last 12 years, leukaemia £27 million per annum, bowel £20 million per annum and prostate £14 million per annum, compared to just £3.5 million for brain cancer.''
Meanwhile, bodies like Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Research Institute had been accused of ignoring brain tumours even though they claimed the lives of more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer, The Telegraph reported.
Health experts at Imperial College, Queen Mary, University of London and Plymouth and Portsmouth universities warn that treatments were lagging behind the huge advances seen in breast, lung and prostate cancers.
According to charity Brain Tumour Research, it would take 100 years for brain cancer to catch up current developments in other diseases.
According to Geoff Pilkington, professor of cellular and molecular neuro-oncology at the University of Portsmouth, the disease was very complex and the money had not been forthcoming.
He added, Cancer Research UK had noticeably moved away from some cancers towards others and brain, pancreatic and oesophageal remained fairly stuck.
He added, they all however, had very poor outcomes, they all significantly involved surgery as a key treatment and across all medical funding surgery had been left behind.
